It can be good for both of them. There are a few places in Creation where the living and dead exist in relative harmony.
Ancestor ghosts are respected and revered in many of creations corners for that reason.
Yes, I suppose I should have spent more effort differentiating between 'regular ghosts' and 'hungry ghosts'.
In Essence/3e lore, sorcerous initiation lacks 'steps', and the Trials of Brigid are gone. You need some sort of unique advantage to initiate into sorcery/necromancy, but there are a lot of things that do it: instruction from Raksi, a bargain with Mara, studying at the Heptagram, a deal with a powerful spirit, etc. I homebrewed a possible sorcerous initiation based on the trials earlier in the thread, but it was not voted for.
Does that mean that if we used Summon Elemental for, say, a powerful ifrit and negotiated for them to teach, mortals in Brockton Bay could learn sorcery? IIRC that was the intent of Salina's Working back during the First Age, though if the Trials are gone I can see other things changing as well.
Personal Milestone:
[ ] Repurchase Ox Body Technique
[ ] Create a personal mode for a charm
-[ ] Cat's Puffed Tail
-[ ] Harmonious Presence Meditation
-[ ] Iron Kettle Body
-[ ] Orichalcum Battle Soul
[ ] Buy the first dot in an ability
-[ ] Craft
-[ ] Navigate
-[ ] Ranged Combat
-[ ] Stealth
-[ ] War
Minor Milestone
[ ] Increase an ability
-[ ] Athletics
-[ ] Awareness
-[ ] Close Combat
-[ ] Craft
-[ ] Embassy
-[ ] Integrity
-[ ] Navigate
-[ ] Performance
-[ ] Physique
-[ ] Ranged Combat
-[ ] Sagacity
-[ ] Stealth
-[ ] War
[ ] Charm or spell write in
So would a personal mode for a charm be considered...
Taylor-made? *rimshot*
More seriously, I want to look at some of the options here for a second. I'll skip the personal-mode charms for the above because honestly I'm not sure what is on offer, but:
- Craft: the 'making stuff' skill, useful for making artifacts, understanding Tinker Tech, repairing buildings and overall 'building the tools to do X'. I like it, I just don't think it's what we want right now.
- Navigate: The 'get from A to B' skill, covers everything from wandering in the wilderness on foot to landing a spaceship. What we'll most likely use it for is either "teenager learning to drive a car" or, in our cape persona, "ride air-doggo around". Also has the benefit of helping us to figure out this whole 'cultivating from animals' business if we wanted to generate spider silk.
- Stealth: the ability to
avoid being seen. It has obvious benefits, but it's not a playstyle we're focusing on right now.
- Ranged Combat: The "I want to punch this guy but he's all the way over there" ability. I like the idea of getting a bow and knock-out arrows and doing the horse-archer (wolf-archer?) thing at some point, backed up by Lightning Hoof Style (should we get a reasonable conversion for that) but we're not at the point where that's an option as we're currently restricted to 'regular gun (that kills people)' and 'throw rocks'. I'm willing to hold off on this a bit longer until we can secure better options.
- War: "What is going on (violence edition)". Something we're probably going to want going forward, but not something I think we need quite yet.
So, charms. I'm not going to go into details, just broad strokes:
- Combat charms. We can always use more, but it's mostly "fight more gooder". While cleaning up the streets will involve punching Kaiser in the face (possibly repeatedly!), that's not the only way we can make a difference
- Medicine charms. Panacea is a Big Deal, we can also become a Big Deal. Whether it is helping addicts come clean, reducing casualties in an Endbringer fight or just helping out at the hospital, that's all stuff that would arguably do more good than something like Heaven Thunder Hammer (though honestly they're both good things to have for different reasons)
- Performance charms. Helping us Do Good through broadcast media (something the PRT is generally leery of if they don't control it, but I think we can pull it off with the 'PRT affiliate' tag) , it would help us spread the good news of not just that you
should help, but
how. Something I'd like to propose is a charm that lets us host well, inspired by
Sweeten-the-Tap Method. Something like "if you are able to plan an event advocating a specific agenda, everyone pushing that agenda rolls +dice" or something. Example: the PRT lets Taylor offer suggestions for their Forsberg Gallery gala, she makes a few adjustments to the menu, table layout and briefs some of the Protectorate and PRT attendees on how to comport themselves differently or topics to emphasize. The event raises a bit above the expected fundraising goal but the real take-away is that everyone was genuinely looking forward to doing it again sometime soon and social wheels are greased for other projects going forward.
- Craft charms. If we want artifacts (and I think we do), this is how to do it. It also would help us rebuild the city in a more literal fashion (I wonder how much of that
$23 million price tag to clear away the ships in the Boat Graveyard we could knock off by repairing them on-site? What could benefit from restoring the trainyard to functioning order?) and may let us get brownie points from Tinkers by restoring damaged equipment. Moreover I believe it's helpful for designing new mundane devices (better mousetrap or "very basic force field mk1") and factories to make them. My charm suggestions:
-- Flawless Diagnostic Technique (Flawless Diagnosis but for Craft, discussed elsewhere)
-- charm to design workshops for improved efficiency, be it for a Tinker's workshop, the Solar's own kitchen or a regular factory getting its design overhauled
-- Holistic Miracle Understanding-esque "if you use the item you know how it was made"/be able to distill fundamental principles of use from seeing something operate ("I may not know how Uppercrust manages to do the really intricate work he does but I now know the theory behind how forcefields work")
-- Components used in a crafting project work very well together. Intended to make Solar-grade PB&J sandwiches for Danny when he goes to work (may also have uses for other things, but let's focus on the important things)
- Survival charms. Mostly the 'talk to animals and convince them to work with us' variety, this is potentially a few different sources of income (spider silk, horseshoe crab blood, snake venom, etc), but it depends how deep we want to go down that rabbit hole (bird spy networks, super-verdant gardens, training up Bitch's pack of dogs into a team of highly-disciplined super-dogs etc)
- Organizational charms. Either understanding organizations, boosting organizations (Servant-Rewarding Benevolance says 'hi') or debuffing organizations, this is where we can do a lot of good. Case in point; what lets us do more healing, adopting a half dozen Medicine charms that let us do what Panacea does, or one charm that lets us say "everyone working in this hospital gets +1 auto success at hospital stuff this month"?
By the way Amazing Azban, does
Beast-Ambassador Attitude work for what you were thinking of for a 'talk to critters' charm?
Director Piggot circa when not Ward cost her the very annoying Ward (who she didn't even want), but gave her 2 Protectorate heroes: I SEE THIS AS ABSOLUTE WIN!!!
I think she's willing to be bought off for now because she's getting two capes (who, per protocol, are likely going to be transferred out of the city for rebranding but she might get one or two capes transferred in as an 'attagirl') and eventually recognize that Zenith is a cape that is doing more good not part of the Protectorate, but between her distrust of capes in general and the incentives the PRT has for controlling all of the capes it can (not just financial, though those are the most prominent)
What I feel we should hope for with Emily is 'working relationship', not 'valued non-asset'.
But for people who don't want to write in charms, I have found a
list
My anti-virus doesn't like this very much, but I appreciate the effort to share.
[X] Plan: Maker Rising
-[X] Buy the first dot in an ability
--[X] Craft
-[X] Increase an Ability
--[X] Craft
This one kind of speaks for itself it's focusing on Making things her costume any possible Sorcerers infrastructure later possibly any housing or structure she wants to build in the bay as she attempts to fix the city.
The first plan is more focused on Direct reppraisal and survival against enemies this one is more about reaching goals of building a better Brockton Bay there's also the fact that the graveyard has to go and craft is the ability used to safely break down objects and turn those objects into useful things like massive ship corpses into housing blocks or anything else like steel beams.
It also allows the building of a costume and possibly a distinct weapon or anything along those lines.
I'm a simp for crafting and all, but I have to ask whether two dots of Craft is better than one dot of craft and a Craft charm. Is something like Flawless Diagnostic Technique (Flawless Diagnosis Technique but for Craft instead of medicine) an option?
[X] Plan: Alexandria package
-[X] Repurchase Ox Body Technique
-[X] Charm or spell write in
---[X] Ten Ox Meditation
While she won't be flinging cars anytime soon this allows her to make a good Headway on that front while also allowing her to survive more punishment in general.
What does Ten Ox Meditation do?
[X] Plan: Cape-tuber in the making
-[X] Buy the first dot in an ability
--[X] Craft
-[X] Charm or spell write in:
--[X] Virtue-Shaping Harmony (TLDR: We get to put minor virtues into people who watch our stuff)
I like the charm, but how is Craft helping the C-tuber thing?
Not voting yet, but trying this on for size:
[] Plan Cape-Tube is Going Places
-[] Buy the first dot in an ability
--[] Navigate
-[] Charm or spell write in:
--[] Virtue-Shaping Harmony (TLDR: We get to put minor virtues into people who watch our stuff)
